Young and Old

Related Books:

After Herzog came out, Saul Bellow began the slow transformation from young Bellow into old Bellow, from the critically adored but little-known writer to the Nobel Prize winner whose views were solicited on every topic. In The New Yorker, Louis Menandwrites about a new biography of the author, which tackles his early career. Related: our own Emily St. John Mandelon Bellow’s novel The Bellarosa Connection.

Thomas Beckwith
is a staff writer for The Millions and an MFA candidate at Johns Hopkins. Prior to coming to Baltimore, he studied literature and worked in IT while living in Dublin, Ireland. You can find him on Twitter at @tdbeckwith.

Stieg Larsson’s Swedish publishers have hired David Lagercrantz to write a fourth novel in the best-selling Millennium trilogy. Lagercrantz’s last book was a biography of soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Earlier this week, I told you about a few lists of some really great poetry from 2015. In keeping with the poetic spirit, here’s another fantastic piece from The New York Times in which everyone from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Elena Ferrante talk about their favorite poems of all time.

Why do articles go viral? At The New Yorker, Maria Konnikovatraces what makes a popular story all the way back to Aristotle, but today’s clickbait has two features: a positive message or an ability to excite the reader emotionally. This probably explains why we love those articles about puppies. Pair with: Our piece on if book titles were written for clicks.

“I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well known as they should be—their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves.” An excerpt from Lydia Davis‘s foreword to Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories is now online.